CCTALK 14年10月某日 群英大讲堂 名人演讲 J.K.Rowling2008.Episode2-Topic1-Part1

3. The Themes
“The fringe benefits of failure;
& the importance of imagination.”
What would you say if you were
given such a topic?

4. The fringe benefits of failure
Episode 4

5. Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at
graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience
for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my
lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance
between the ambition I had for myself, and what
those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do,
ever, was to write novels. However, my parents,
both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds
and neither of whom had been to college, took the
view that my overactive imagination was an amusing
personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or
secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with
the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

6. So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I
wanted to study English Literature. A compromise
was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and
I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had
my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of
the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down
the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was
studying Classics; they might well have found out
for the first time on graduation day. Of all the
subjects on this planet, I think they would have
been hard put to name one less useful than Greek
mythology when it came to securing the keys to an
executive bathroom.

7. I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do
not blame my parents for their point of view. There is
an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering
you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old
enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping
that I would never experience poverty. They had been
poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I
quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling
experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and
sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty
humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by
your own efforts, that is indeed something on which
to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only
by fools.

8. Discussion
Do you think poverty is a good thing? Why and
why not?
Do you think failure is a good thing? Why and
why not?
Is poverty a failure or does failure lead to
poverty?
How to overcome poverty?

10. Ian McKellen

11. Rosamund Pike

12. Hugh Grant

13. Stephen Fry